The Satin Sash

by Red Garnier

  “What does that mean? Are you dumping Grey?”

  “Never! No! I love Grey.” Her hands trembled, and she plucked at her straw, frowning into the depths of her iced tea as she twirled it. “I sometimes feel Heath belongs with us, that’s all.”

  “As in, you three?”

  Toni spread her arms aside.“It’s just that I’ve lately wondered . . . well, we have two legs, right?” She smiled wanly, lifted her shoulders. “Two eyes.Two hands.Why can’t we have two lovers?”

  Two lovers who also went at each other, two male lovers who also understood, cared about, admired, and complemented each other. . . .

  “Okay. This conversation has turned from normal to creepiest ever. I don’t know what to say! The extent of my sexual experience ranges from missionary to woman on top, and that was weeks ago. Now you tell me you have not one hunk in your bed, but two?”

  “Oh, god, and I want them both!” she groaned in a strange combo of mirth and misery. “What does that make me?”

  “A bitch!” Louisa said with such force Toni felt electrocuted in her seat. “And you’re speaking nonsense,” Louisa continued, calming herself with a breath. “I mean, who’s ever heard of that?”

  “It’s not that unusual, Louisa.” Toni angled her head and assessed her friend, a little surprised by the sudden, overwhelming ire Louisa was trying and failing to control.“I’ve Googled it.And some people make it work.”

  Even while the rest of the world thinks they’re crazy . . .

  “But, Toni, you have Grey! How can Grey Richards not be enough for any woman in the world?”

  “He’s enough. I adore him! One has nothing to do with the other. Having four children doesn’t mean you don’t love all four of them. Anyway. Enough about me.Tell me about you.”

  “You’d be asleep in minutes. No. Explain this to me, because I’m finding it difficult to come to terms with all of this. What would your parents think? I mean, do they even know?”

  “I don’t care what they think. I don’t care what anyone thinks except Grey . . . and Heath.” She went red remembering them in Cabo . . . their hands . . . their mouths . . .

  Glancing over her shoulder, Louisa scanned the expanse of the restaurant and dropped her voice to a whisper. “How did they . . . Was this at the same time?”

  “Sometimes.” Toni cooled her palms with her glass and placed them over her cheeks, refreshing her burning face. “This is a little awkward. Can we talk about you now?”

  Louisa sat back, nodded, and for a while they talked. They ate. They laughed.Then an odd, strained silence came, and Louisa said, “No wonder.”

  “No wonder what?” Toni asked, munching the last bit of her chicken.

  “No wonder Grey has been so distant since his return. He stares blankly off into space, or dictates something while staring at the window. He rubs his face with his hands. Today he hadn’t shaved when he came in. I’ve never seen him looking so scruffy. I thought he was stressed. The wheels in his head never seem to cease, and you know he always seems to be thinking something, evaluating, analyzing? Now I know what he’s . . . stressing about. He’s stressing about you.”

  When the words hit—and they took a stunned moment to—her heart clenched awfully tight. If she’d thought she could feel no more anxious, no more confused and miserable, she wasn’t counting on this last.The thought of Grey unhappy . . .

  “What do you mean?” she said weakly. “At home he’s . . . at home he’s fine.”

  He’d been fine with her all week. At night he whispered to her, told her he loved her, and by day he showered her with attention and welcomed her own eager attempts to be with him. They couldn’t seem to stop calling each other, wanting to be together. She and Grey were fine!

  “Really?” Louisa pursed her lips in distaste. “Maybe it’s work stuff, then. I hear there’s an IPO of the company coming up.”

  Toni’s eyes dropped to her plate, and she frowned at the remains of her food in puzzlement. Was he closing himself to her? Was he pretending to be all right for her sake? And if he was, could she blame him? Wasn’t she doing the same, desperately attempting to restore their lives as they were before?

  As soon as the bill had been paid and they stepped out into the sidewalk,Toni asked, “Want to hit the shops?”

  Louisa glanced at her watch. “I need to get back. Lunch hour’s over—”

  “Do you know where he is?” Toni whispered, running a hand down her skirt as they hit the busy sidewalks of Michigan Avenue.

  “He?”

  “Heath.”

  Louisa stared at her, then briskly answered,“Oaxaca.” She added meaningfully, “It’s in Mexico.”

  Toni waved a hand. “I know where it is.”

  “You do? I had to look it up.”

  “Louisa?” Pausing as though to think straight, Toni stared at a window display, her eyes on the clothes but her mind far away.“Do you think you could get me his phone number?”

  “Might I ask what you want it for?”

  “I want to talk to him,” she admitted. To know he is all right, she told herself. “And I want to know if he’s talking to Grey.”

  “Give me until this afternoon.”

  “Thank you.”

  Minutes later,Toni followed her to the impressive marble lobby of the RS Corporation building.All eyes across the nineteenth floor seemed to zero in on Toni when they stepped out of the elevator.

  Louisa settled behind her desk and fidgeted around before she announced her to Grey. It took only a second for six feet three inches of handsome and magnificent to fill the doorway.That smile. From her desk, Louisa looked like she had never seen it. It was wide and devastating, it was so dazzling. Toni felt tiny butterflies race down to her toes when he jerked his head toward his office. “Get in here, Miss Kearny.”

  Toni did.

  He leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms, looking displeased. “You steal my assistant for two hours and dare come here without something for me?”

  “I’ve got this.” She lifted her skirt, and Grey peeked at one of her newest acquisitions: a sheer pink thong that was barely there. He palmed her ass, his hands huge and tanned on Toni’s creamy buttocks as they squeezed.

  “I like that.” She squeaked in delight when he massaged deeper, his chuckle echoing in her warming body. “Hmm. I like that more.”

  She dropped her skirt and whirled around to trap him by the collar. “I thought I could steal you now.”

  “I’m afraid that’s going to cost you,” he drawled in deceptive casualness.

  “Oh? And do you take body as payment?” She signaled to all five feet four inches of herself with what was, hopefully, a tempting sweep of her hands.

  Brows quirked in interest, Grey moved around his desk and punched an extension from his desk phone.

  “Louisa, what does my afternoon look like?”

  It seemed to look busy, because Louisa spent a long time on the other end of the line. But what mattered to Toni, what gave her the opportunity to be with the man she loved and talk and make love, was Grey’s arrogant smile and the husky command, “Empty it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was a hotel room number, and the two times she tried there was no answer. She didn’t dare to leave a message.With a sinking heart, she grabbed the Post-it and tore it.

  Enough of him. Forget it. Forget Cabo!

  Plopping down on the couch, she covered her face with her hands and groaned in misery. It was no use; she couldn’t forget. And all she wanted was to know how he was doing. Whereas before their weekend, Grey would mention him all the time, the subject of Heath had been carefully avoided for two weeks. Toni was desperate to know something about him. Anything. Was he all right? Was he with someone? Did he at least think about her?

  She was in that same sulking position when Grey got home, and as she rose to greet him as she always did, she gathered her courage. She worked on his tie and jacket and rumpled his hair, and whispered, “Grey, I wa
nt to talk to you about something.”

  He placated her with a kiss. “Ten minutes, then I’m yours.”

  And he disappeared into the bathroom, where she heard him running the water for a shower. Normally she might have joined him, but she was too anxious for anything except running her thoughts through her mind. So she waited on the bed, knees curled under her, fingers drumming on her thighs. Talking was the best way to go. If only he would express his opinions more openly, and he would listen to hers . . .

  The phone rang, and when she lifted it, she answered to silence. “Hello?” she repeated.

  “I’m calling for Grey.”

  The low, gruff sound of thunder gripped at her chest. “Heath?”

  “Yeah.”

  Inside her a feeling went loose, wild and untamed, like a deadly tornado. She began to shiver, her hand trembling, her lungs straining for air. She wanted to weep with joy and to cry with sorrow at the distance she sensed between them.“You could at least say hello to me,” she said, more with longing than accusation.

  And briskly, almost coolly, he said, “Hello, Toni.”

  His voice . . . it was almost too much to bear. A breath shuddered out of her.

  She wiped her free hand on her lap—it was clammy, and suddenly she didn’t know what to do with it except tug at the fabric on her waist. “H-how have you been?”

  “Working.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is Grey there?”

  “He just got in. He’s in the shower.” She lowered her voice, pressed the receiver closer to her lips, her voice betraying her emotion. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “I’ll call back later.”

  “Heath, please.” Why didn’t he talk to her? Was she the only one who felt this?

  The tomblike silence was deafening.

  When she spoke again, she sounded desperate even to her own ears. “Please. Please.Talk to me, Heath.”

  For a wrenching heartbeat, she thought he would hang up, but then his terse, emotional hiss charged into her ear. “I’m losing my mind. I get hard just listening to your voice. I hurt all over, all day. You’re in my mind, in my dreams. I try and try to forget you, and just knowing you’re with Grey is driving nails into me.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut as she fell back on her pillow, the sheets cold against her nape while her body felt so hot. “I hurt, too.”

  “Cat, baby.” His sharp inhale skittered through her. “Where do you hurt, tell me?”

  My heart. Toni hesitated before saying it. Grey would hear. He would see. He would know. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was all wrong, it was all terribly, unbearably wrong.

  “I hurt all over.”

  “Where?” His voice dropped to a coo that might have been meant to soothe her but wreaked havoc on her rioting nerves. “In your little pussy?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Oh, Cat, what I wouldn’t give to be there now. I’d kiss you until I don’t know who I am anymore, spread those long, silky legs and . . .”

  Planting her heels on the bed, she spread open her legs, sliding her fingers into her panties, imagining it was him searching her body to find this place he’d been before.This place that missed and wanted him so badly. “And?” she asked when he stopped. “Please tell me.”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Heath, tell me!” She pinched her clit so hard she winced in pain. It was nothing, that pain. Compared to the other. Nothing. “I’m wearing your dress.”

  “Oh, baby.”

  “I’m so wet just hearing you. My cream is all over me. I’m touching my clit and I’m desperate; I want your fingers in me.”

  He made a strangled sound.

  She found her slick folds and gentled her strokes, pleasure radiating up to her tingling breasts.“Heath.” She moaned as she circled. “Oh, Heath.”

  “I can hear you panting for me,” he said in a terse rasp.“Are you touching yourself? I want to hear what you’re doing.”

  “I’m touching my pussy. I want it to be you.”

  He made another sound, full of agony and frustration, then croaked, “Where are you?”

  “On the bed, with my legs open. And I ache all over.”

  “If I were there, I’d be licking that wet, syrupy puss—” He trailed off when she slipped two fingers through the slit and cried out, moving them fast. The pleasure whirled around her walls, piercing up to her nipples, her pussy rippling with wanting.

  “Heath, I miss you so much.” She rocked against her hand, seized by the sound of his voice, the rampaging need that listening to him unleashed in her.

  “Toni.” She heard it then, in the sound of his voice, the quick scrape of flesh; she knew he was touching himself. She imagined him pulling from root to crown, humping, sweating, and her blood felt sluggish with arousal.

  “Heath, I don’t want you to be with anyone. I think of you going to some prostitute somewhere and I feel sick. You belong with us.”

  He didn’t reply. She heard his grunts, his sounds of pleasure. A fever broke in her, merciless, racking her with shudders inside and out. She moved her fingers in her, wishing they were the fat, blunt-tipped fingers of Heath.

  “Heath . . . what are you doing?”

  “I’m fucking you,” he rasped, and as though he couldn’t think of anything else, “I’m fucking you, Cat.”

  “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” Her hand was drenched with cream and his voice in her ear struck her womb like a thunderstorm. “Fuck me harder.”

  And she heard him—him coming, the breath tearing out of him so that even the phone seemed to vibrate—and she closed her eyes and pushed deeper into her cleft.

  “Want some help with that, princess?”

  Her eyes flew to a bare-chested Grey, exiting the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his face impassive as he propelled himself forward.

  As though in slow motion, she watched with a thundering heart as he pried the phone from her fingers, his free hand curving on her hip as he set it back into its cradle. He was so . . . calm.

  “Want to explain to me why you’re having phone sex with . . . ?”

  She chewed on her lip, embarrassed, angry, desperate. “Heath.”

  “Heath. Of course.”

  “Grey . . .”

  “How long?”

  “What?”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  She tugged her skirt back down and swung her legs over the side of the bed. While she spoke, all she could face were her own bare toes. “I’ve never done it before. He was calling for you. I just heard his voice and . . . I wanted to talk to him.You used to tell me everything about him, and now that you don’t, I’ve felt so thirsty for just a little news.”

  “But you weren’t talking just now, were you?”

  She shrugged, swung her legs back and forth.“I miss it. I miss . . . him.”

  When she dared look up to gauge his reaction, there wasn’t so much as a flicker of his eyes to betray him. Flooded with relief that he was so self-possessed, she plunged on, wanting to get this out in the open.

  “You talk to him,” she explained.“He’s your partner.With me . . . I shared things with him, personal things, and suddenly all ties have been severed.”

  “I talk to him?” As though she weren’t safe around him, or him around her, he stalked across the room, gritting his teeth. “Heath and I are fucked. Fucked,Toni.We barely speak three words to each other.”

  “But why?”

  “Because you still want him and it is tearing me apart!”

  “No, Grey, no!”

  The phone began to ring and ring and ring. Incessantly.

  When Grey saw her glance at the phone, considering answering, an icy veil settled over his eyes, making the hair on her bare arms rise. For the barest of seconds, pain ravaged his features as if a flood or wildfire swept through life and civilization and love.Then there was nothing on his face at all.

  The idea that he thought he wasn’
t important to her, that he thought she didn’t care, made her break out in a sweat.

  “Grey.” She took a step toward him, but was quickly halted by his stare. Grey never lost his temper. The only time she’d seen him out of control was after the benefit, when he’d been so jealous. But the walls he put up now to obstruct her seemed as effective as a roar. She cringed under his eyes.The gold in them was glacial. Freezing her to the spot.

  If she hadn’t experienced the fire within him firsthand, seen his face crumple when he came in her, his every wall shatter when he looked at her, she’d have thought him inhuman.

  His mellow tone and his lack of emotion as he regarded her was no less chilling. “Am I failing you in some way, Antonia Kearny?”

  “No! You’re perfect. I love you.” She dared to step up to him and rise on tiptoe to kiss him. She’d never felt such unmoving lips under hers. She tried coaxing them open with feathery movements of her mouth, catching his lower lip between hers, giving hot little tugs. She slid her hands around his strong neck, caressed the damp hairs at his nape. “Grey, I love you.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m passionately in love with you.”

  “I used to believe you were.” He extracted her arms from his neck and set them at her sides before walking to the window to peer out through the blinds.

  The muscled back he revealed to her was so taut and rocklike that it proved successful in keeping her from approaching, from reaching him. She wrung her hands, tried to explain. “Grey, somehow it’s as though he’s always been a part of us. Like a ghost, but he’s alive.”

  He stroked the back of his head with one hand, his frustration so tangible it caused her throat to squeeze. “One weekend, Toni. It was supposed to be just that. But it’s not enough for you, is it, princess? Nothing’s enough for you. I can’t fill you. I can’t make you happy. I can’t—”

  “That’s not true!”

  “You call to him. In your sleep, you say our names, you say my name, his name.” At his sides, his knuckles jutted out of his fists. “You’ve been . . . god, you’ve been pining away for him.”